A collection of automotive stuff, restaurant/travel-related items and personal observations; mostly a lot of claptrap, really.

Nashville

Taken a few years ago at some joint on Broadway in Nashville, this was one of several photos with good-looking girls I had never laid eyes on before. It wasn't my birthday, but the Nissan crew was telling every attractive female we encountered that it was. Here's to getting older!

Sunday, April 8, 2018

A quick stop on our free day at the Hyundai Kona event to shoot a brewery video.

I'm not the kind of guy who eschews (I
used that word to establish my writer bona fides.) driving in favor
of flying. I know in my pseudo profession of auto journalist, it is
almost blasphemy to utter the word “flying.” We are supposed to
love driving above all else, right? Maybe yes, maybe no. For me
writing about cars and the auto industry is a job and not a calling.
I've managed to stay busy at it for more than 30 years – even
making some money along the way – but that's as much due to inertia
as anything else. There's a certain amount of comfort in sticking
with a thing. I can't bring myself to change gyms. Change careers?
Are you kidding!

Although most people I know in my age
bracket probably haven't racked up the volume of road miles I have,
driving over the years has mostly been simply to get me somewhere. It
was cheaper or more convenient to drive than fly. Unlike many of my
fellow travelers among the motoring press, when given the choice to
drive or fly, I'll fly 98 percent of the time.

Most of us fly once or more each month
as we follow the auto manufacturers media vehicle launch events like
carnies chasing state-fair midways. It's a traveling roadshow that
doesn't offer the choice of driving. It is physically impossible to
drive from Cleveland to San Diego and then San Diego to Virginia in
the same week between two- or three-day carmaker programs. It's
science. It can't be done.

I muse about all of this today because
tomorrow I am driving from Greenville, South Carolina to Durham,
North Carolina for a Volkswagen program to drive the next Jetta.
Roughly a 240-mile exercise, the trip should require less than four
hours. Probably about what it would have taken for me to fly Delta
from Greenville to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Durham. I had the
option to fly; I chose to drive.

A 240-mile slog isn't unreasonable.
This one in fact, is virtually all on I-85, which I pick up a mile
from my house and runs smack-dab through the middle of Durham. How
tough a drive can it be? Yet, I don't look forward to it. In fact,
I'm dreading it to some extent.

My thought process when making the
drive/fly decision wasn't so much weighing flying time against
driving time as it was thinking about the possibilities of having my
own wheels in Durham once there.

Since launching my YouTube channel
BEER2WHISKEY, I'm always scheming to record a segment in the many
different places I travel ostensibly for other reasons. Because my
numerous car-intro trips each year are all over the U.S., they are
excellent opportunities to shoot a segment in a faraway location I
might not otherwise visit. For example, I was recently on the Big
Island in Hawaii with Hyundai and shot a brewery video in Kona.

Without even looking to see what
breweries might be close by the hotel in which VW is hosting us, I
committed to driving instead of flying. Although there is much less
to think about when flying to these events because the carmaker
whisks us to and from the hotel, dragging my two Pelican cases of
gear along on flights is a real pain. The downside is, once I
arrive at the hotel, I have to come up with my own transportation to
and from the brewery. Driving to Durham means tossing my cases of
gear, as well as my rollerboard full of clothing, into the car and
not worrying with them again until arriving at the brewery. And, I'll
already have my brewery-to-hotel transportation. Easy-peasy.

As it turns out, there are a couple of
breweries within blocks of our hotel. Without too much effort, I
lined up the Durty Bull Brewing Company for an early afternoon shoot
tomorrow. Because I'm covering the Jetta event for a client, it will
be like double dipping. Killing two birds with one stone, so to
speak. I like that.

So, despite not being thrilled about
driving, it makes sense on a couple of levels. It's not often my
decisions make any sense at all; forget about making sense on more
than one level.

My 4-1-1

I began covering the automotive industry in 1986, when I parlayed my position as a retail sales rep into helping conceptualize and establish a stand-alone automotive section for the Boca Raton News a Knight-Ridder newspaper in South Florida. In 1995 I moved to the Palm Beach Post to help develop its bi-weekly automotive pages. Leaving there in 2000, I freelanced car reviews to a variety of publications before assuming a senior editor position at AMI Autoworld magazine in 2001. While at AMI I helped launch NOPI Street Performance Compact magazine and was appointed its managing editor. I have been freelancing since leaving AMI in 2004. My regular outlets have included Hispanic Magazine, the Miami Herald, the Washington Times, the Journal-Register Newspapers, AAA Go magazine, MyCarData.com, Automotive Metrics, AutoTrader, Bankrate.com and Interest.com.

In addition to freelancing automotive reviews, from 1991 until 2001 I was supervising producer of the syndicated television series Discover America.